So, after working on this a little more, I believe the issue is the RS232-TTL adapter not communicating correctly with the consult adapter. The way i tested this is using two adapters, one male & one female, and hooked them up to eachtother- rx to tx and tx to rx. Gave them both 5V and tried to see if it would just pass the signal from the USB adapter through - it wouldn't.
SO.....my next idea is to use a USB host shield along with the USB cable (based on the profilic 2303 chip) I have and see if that will work. I did get some serial data sniffed using a software serial sniffer so I can try and emulate those commands via the shield. Only problem - I doubt anyone has any libraries for this and I'm not good enough at programming to write my own since I doubt it's as simple as just sending the commands and listening for reply. I'll do some more research on the usb shield and see if that helps or not...